New Mexico's Reptile Wrangler
Launching a curio shop with two baby boas as a come-on, an ex-GI and his wife found snakes a profitable business.
By Weldon D. Woodson
ON May 1, 1946, 26-year-old Texas-born ex-GI Herman Atkinson and his 24-year-old wife Phyllis opened a small curio shop on tourist-packed U. S. Highway 66, a mile and a half west of the pint-size village of Grants, New Mexico.
For bait to lure motorists, they had caged two baby boa constrictors. A gargantuan sign blazened to the world their Lilliputian "den of death." Despite the limitations of their improvised menagerie, they observed that visitors showed more wide-eyed interest in the duet of boas than the curios.

Art - By Gum!
MRS. Faye Garriott of Gardena, California, has chewing gum all over her walls but she doesn't mind. She put it there herself. She makes gum pictures.
She began using gum some 25 years ago to patch furniture and picture frames by molding it to fill chipped surfaces. Then she began making pictures themselves.

Goat's Milk Fudge Goat’s Milk Fudge WHEN E. D. DeWitt retired to Florida in 1948, he had “no intention of going into business. He liked goat’s milk so he bought three Nubian nannies. One day, just for the heckuvit, he made some fudge from the milk. It tasted good, so he put up a sign, advertising it. Now […]

The Truth About... Our Weather and the A-Bomb
Many people, including weathermen, are inclined to believe that the atomic blasts are the cause of the vicious tornadoes, hurricanes, wind and rain storms that have swept across our country. MI Editors asked Eric Sloane, noted meteorologist, for his opinion. Here's what he has to say.
THERE'S little doubt about our changing climate. The fierce winters of yesterday are disappearing, tornadoes and hurricanes are becoming more vicious and weather trends aren't trends" any more. They can't be depended upon. Just about anything can happen—and does.

My Factory in Lilliput
A scoffing friend told the author, "Build models and your income will be the some size." But he was wrong!
By Dale Clark As Told To James Joseph
I WAS only a kid not yet in high school when I set up my first shop. My folks were living in a Twin Falls, Idaho, motel and an old table was the handiest surface into which I could stick pins. The pins held down balsa spars which eventually became a Corbin Super Ace model airplane. When I finished the model I promptly sold it to a kid next door for a buck.

MI-stoppers
SHARP TIMEKEEPER is this knife-blade-thin watch exhibited recently at an International Timepiece Show in gay Paris. The manufacturer claims that watch is thin enough to cut meat.
STILTED WORKER, left, is no drawback to the Hugh R. Dodge Company in Detroit which puts insulation on ceilings. Stilts eliminate scaffolds. save time. Crew of 12 uses them proficiently.

O.K. Murphy's Electrical Massagers O.K. Murphy’s Electrical Massagers OWEN K. Murphy of Adamsville, Pa., is a relaxed fellow with an invigorating mind. His mechanical massage units have resulted in making people, from housewives to businessmen, massage-conscious. His Niagara Manufacturing Company puts out 14 different electrical units which are designed to relax and tone up tired muscles. They can be […]

Thomas Foster's School By Mail
By Alfred Lief
COAL mine accidents in the 1880's prompted a Pennsylvania editor, Thomas Jefferson Foster, to crusade for safety laws. In his paper he ran question -and-answer columns for miners which proved so popular he later compiled them into a free handbook. But it seemed to him that the message he had to tell should be conveyed to his readers in a more systematic way.

Why Don't We Have... SUN POWER
Old Sol has more energy than all the atom bombs in the world lumped together. And it's free ... if we can find a way to harness it.
By Frank Tinsley
EVER since James Watt built the first steam engine, inventors have been trying to harness the sun's heat to stoke their boilers because the sun is the mightiest heat source known to man. Every hour, it floods the earth with a deluge of thermal energy equal to 21 billion tons of coal. Every day, the sun pours more potential power upon our land areas than all mankind's muscle, fuel and working waterfalls have generated since the beginning of time.

Subscription TV Yay for early DRM. How long do you think it would have been before some Norwegian kid built themselves a Descrambling Card Simulation System (DeCSS) and gave the plans to all of their friends so they could view scrambled broadcasts on their non compatible European TVs? Subscription TV WOULD you like to see the opera, […]